Bindi News

After fifty consecutive winery days it finally feels like the harvesting and fermenting are done! The resulting wines in barrel tell the story of a remarkable and exceptionally successful season. It is now we take our first steps off the roller coaster that began in September 2018 and concluded in these first April weeks of 2019. Whilst still slightly giddy, the mind, like the wines, is naturally clearing and brightening.

This growing season began with the driest September in 110 years after a winter disappointingly devoid of saturating rains. It was an eerie omen and had us on edge for what could unfold as the Spring progressed. October saw an unprecedented run of frosts and our nerves were further frayed. Then, thankfully, the season making rains came. November and December provided relieving rainfall and the vines flourished and the dams rose. It really was a dramatic turnaround and the scene and the fruit became set for a potentially great run to harvest…..

In 1992 Bindi was just four years in and for money and love I worked for a wine retailer/importer. Newsletter writing and offering themed dozens was part of my go and selecting the Australian Shiraz dozen was a highlight. The mixed dozen in 1992 included many single site wines such as Jasper Hill, Craiglee, Dalwhinnie, Wendouree, Armagh, Aberfeldy, Mount Edelstone, Brokenwood Graveyard, Tyrell’s Vat 9 and Plantagenet. A delicious roll call both then and certainly now.

For some soap box reason, having never visited an export market nor exported yet (Bindi being just two vintages in), I wrote that these were the wines and stories that Australia should be championing to the world. Under the heading ‘A message for exporters’ this audacious 24 year old bemoaned the international image of Australian wine being focused on wines like Lindermans Bin 65 rather than place and people wines such as Wendouree Shiraz. And for the next 20 years I felt it was mostly much the same.

The wine at the end of the tunnel appears brightly as these two months of increasingly narrow focus, of declining physical, mental and emotional energy, give way to a sense of lightness, contemplation, softening. Slumbering even.

The harvest and all that surrounds it is a compelling and demanding time. All is heightened. It’s a time where vulnerabilities are laid bare. The weather and it’s vagaries test and threaten. The logistics of the vineyard demand. The Groundhog Day(s) and weeks in the winery create a blur of and in time. What day is it, what week is it, what vintage is it? Where’s the bloody fitting for that tank?

It’s a time for serious analysis, and I’m not talking pH and sugars. Every thing done, by any and everyone, has an impact on capturing a year’s work and how the market duly unfolds in a year’s time. These critical weeks of pitching in, working for the common good, striving for an outcome of excellence and beauty is marked by the generosity and energy of many contributors. As it is and as it must, these are viewed and reviewed, observed and analysed and appreciated and stored away for the quiet times of deeper autumn and wintertime.

We spend a lot of time looking across and above our vineyards. We admire the easily evident beauty of ordered vines embellishing the landscape. It’s very infrequent, and certainly not Instagram worthy, to focus below the surface and below the microscope.

In 1998 I spent my usual few weeks roaming the vineyards and cellars of Burgundy before spending one week following the Loire from Nevers to the coast. Much of my trip was visiting producers for importer Paul de Burgh-Day (which is now Robert Walters’ Bibendum Wine Co) where the focus was (and remains) on the finest vignerons with a bent for promoting soil life and low input vinification. Burgundy was its usual inspiring self for wines and conversations of terroir and typicity however it was in the Loire that I felt the dynamic stirring for a lowering of the vision. It was in the Loire that I felt a gathering momentum for seeing and feeling the earth. It shook me up and put us on a patient and determined path to improvement.

As we exit the cold and dark dormancy of winter the promise of spring and the growing season to vintage 2018 begins. This will be our 30th year of vines at Bindi and it’s with excitement and the usual caution that we make our seasonal plans. There are no new projects set for this season and we are inspired to work carefully and in timely ways as each stage of the season approaches.

We are releasing the last of the 2016 wines and it’s been very pleasing to see the wines evolve so well in barrel and now settling in bottle. They are harmonious and textured wines that have the intensity to age very well. Most of the 2017 Pinot Noirs have finished the malolactic and we have been keeping a close eye on their progress and racking where appropriate. There are a few 2017 Chardonnay barrels still to ferment the last of their sugars (as the weather warms again) but most are dry and resting brightly on their yeast lees….

A few weekends ago I participated in a wonderful wine event in Daylesford conceived and organised by Jenny Latta. As is the way, my attendance was for work, which happens to be my pleasure, and the aptly titled event ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ was indeed a pleasure to be included in. Having vinously grown up with the classics, having been generously graced with great wine by equally great people, my lessons and subsequent aspirations (and hopefully outcomes) are pretty conservative. Not in a 1980s acid and oak academic Australian style, but rather with an embrace of vine farming and the wine grower’s way. I like my wine’s ambition to embody an attempt for it to taste of where it comes from. I mean this in a landscape sense, not a human sense. It’s about where from, not who from. Show me land, not hand, in a wine. My sensibilities have been honed such that my nose is turned up at aspects of wines that are not in place. The term ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ makes so much sense to my wine mind. I have come to mind the dominating caramel sweetness of new American oak (most confrontingly in young wines). I’m jarred by the hardness of theory chasing acid additions. Balancing where you find your balance takes some Read more …

From start to finish, from September to April, the season gives a long ride. Sometimes exhilarating, continually challenging, occasionally debilitating and always, always, satisfying. For whatever the outcome of quality and yield the season must ultimately be viewed positively and the journey itself as a fulfilment. There are gifts to be given and there are gifts to be taken. There’s a certain fatefulness that must be held and accepted over these months. The striving work is done upon the accumulated lessons of seasons past and in this there is an inherent energy tinged with some yearnings, some anxiety and, over-ridingly, much hopefulness. The calmness, the swirl of wisdom from having seen many outcomes does soften this anxiety and heightens the level of acceptance. To a point. Seasons early, seasons late? In 2016 we see the earliest ever calendar pick in early March, yet still 110 to 115 days from fruit set. Abnormal by the calendar, but normal by the period to maturity. In 2017 we are tracking for a harvest early to mid April, about 110 to 115 days from fruit set. Normal is as normal does. And Easter? Well, that was mid March in 2016 and it is mid April in 2017. This telling by the moon is telling. We have experienced the most stunning run of Autumnal weather Read more …

To follow some Bindi news please see @bindiwines on Instagram. The season is now well underway and has required quite a deal of patience. The Spring is nearly over yet we have hardly had a warm day and the vines are running a course of lateness that will perhaps see harvest in mid April. No bad thing. In 2016 Easter was very early and the harvest was also very early. Next year Easter is a month later and it seems the vines are corresponding. Makes sense. Nature governs the seasons, we respond as required, hopefully appropriately! The vines look quite healthy and the crop potential is good, but flowing in early December will determine how well the crop sets. The new High Density vineyard (11,300 vines per hectare) is going very well and will provide its first crop in 2017. This is very exciting. We are also establishing another vineyard in this way just alongside Block 5 and there are 8,500 vines going in in the next few weeks. It has been a challenge to get the time and timing right to plough, mow, spray and prepare the new vineyard for planting. Being too wet is a forgotten difficulty and we are constantly adjusting our activities as the weather turns and disrupts our endeavours. Again, we are being patient!

Warning: No photos, just words. Quite a few. There's a lane way that looks a likely place for a mugger or rough sleeper to inhabit. Seemingly a street to nowhere good. It just so happens to house the hottest restaurant in Chicago right now. Don't bother looking for illuminated signage, there is none. Walk though a working goods lift, dark and industrial. Beyond the curtain veil in to a 28 seat room open to the kitchen. Effectively, every table is a chef's table. Eight hours later I left with a mind bended by outrageously great food and hospitality. Staff training in the way of Bindi beforehand, serving eight Bindi wines to guests over their degustation dinner, then three hours of tasting, vocabulary stretching conversation about impossibly fine and complex dishes and great wine pairings all was done. I said wow a lot to your excellence Oriel Restaurant, Chicago. Whilst the premise of these past two weeks was the Oregon International Pinot Noir Celebration the opportunity to be despatched nationwide by Ronnie Sanders and Aaron Meeker of Vine Street Imports was too good to pass up. IPNC is an iconic, soulful, confident gathering of passionate producers, professionals and consumers. Having been a guest winery in 2008 under the Conservation banner it was hardly entering the unknown but formally presenting 14 Australian pinots Read more ...

The season of 2015-16 is the season of early. Early Flowering, early fruit set, early veraison and, of course, early harvest. All early by the calendar, but the whole season seemed shunted forward. October was the new November, December was the new January and so on and February saw much of the ripening through mild and quite autumnal days. The end of March and early April has become, over the past 15 years, the normal time for harvesting at Bindi (which compares to the decade from 1991 to 2000 where we averaged mid April). And the harvest is pretty much 110 to 115 days after the fruit set, which is normally at the end of November to early December. In 2016 we again harvested between 100 and 115 days from harvest. It's just that starting the harvest on March 4th and ending March 10th is quite mind boggling and sets an early record well ahead of the previous set on March 17th in 2008! And the quality, the style? Well, at this early point the wines have great intensity, balance and length. The winery was full of fine perfume as the Pinots fermented and the structures built with time on skins but overall the ferments were quite quick and exceptionally clean and easy. At the very least it is a Read more ...